Breaking Our Own Codes: Teaching with Greater Clarity and Control
Draft
Mark Stoner, California State University, Sacramento http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/stonerm stoner1@csus.edu
Department of Communication Studies/Center for Teaching and Learning
2007 Lilly-West Conference on College and University Teaching
Pomona, CA
March 16-17, [MS1]
Introduction
Recently, a number of books grounded in the metaphor of “design” have been written to assist teachers at the primary and secondary levels (Davis, Hawley, McMullan & Spilka, 2005; Kalantzis & Cope, 1997) and tertiary level (Innes, 2004; Richlin, 2006; Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) to help their readers “select, design, and create learning experiences that will enable their own students to learn” (Richlin, 2006, p. ix). These books are valuable resources for college and university instructors in particular since they rarely receive the sort of systematic and thorough guidance in pedagogy that these books offer. Additionally, as designers of curricula, college and university faculty often need ways of locating and assessing any course or course of study as part of a curriculum reflecting a discipline; such a vision is necessary in order to appropriately apply the specific practices described so well by Richlin (2006), Innes (2004), Wiggins and McTighe (2005) and others. That is, at the point of teaching a course, specific design and pedagogical tools have purpose and are enhanced when the context and intent of the course is well-understood by the instructor. So, while these practical texts are important for concrete advice for using a variety of teaching strategies, complementary attention to the abstract (invisible) nature of the communication processes that form the content of any course may enhance our ability to “enable [our] own students to learn.” The model presented in this essay offers a “search model” (Stoner & Perkins 2005, pp. 32-33) which functions as a complement to instructional design texts by facilitating analyses of courses and courses of study for the purpose of making instructional design decisions that enhance the meaningfulness of courses for students. This model is intended to help instructors “locate” and analyze their teaching in the context of a curriculum and discipline.
Communicating the Disciplines
Our disciplines and the courses we design to teach the knowledge constituting them are constructed by our disciplinary languages. Of course, not everything is discursively (socially) constructed (Hacking, 1999), but the terms that allow us to talk sensibly about specific complexes of ideas, concepts and theories necessarily are social constructions (Hacking 1999, pp. 6-7; Vygotsky, 1997). This idea matters because it features the symbolic and communicative nature of teaching in any discipline. It also points to the necessary power systems that exist within educational organizations that affect instruction indirectly. The message systems used for instruction, due to their nature as codes, create less visible or invisible conceptual structures that nevertheless must be properly handled by instructors in order to design, facilitate, assess and document learning.
Different disciplines organize knowledge differently because the problems each is trying to solve vary considerably. For example, law features genres of practical human relationships (contracts, business, civil) whereas engineering organizes around classes of physical phenomena (electrical, structural, and mechanical). Consequently, the body of knowledge in disciplines requires differing vocabularies and discursive codes to work in each—law requires facility in argumentation and legal terminology; engineering primarily requires facility with graphical and mathematical languages. The differing discourses of the disciplines shape core commitments to ways of understanding, analyzing, organizing, valuing, and (in some disciplines) critiquing phenomena within their purview. Consequently, as we are inducted into disciplinary frameworks and their approved applications (Polanyi, 1962), these frameworks act as invisible forces that influence our decisions about how to convey knowledge to students. Understanding how discursive forces emanate from our disciplinary languages provides a way mindfully to explain or critique curricular and course designs. In other words, by breaking our own codes we can teach with greater clarity and control.
Three Message Systems
Figure 1 names and organizes three message systems that we regularly use in our work as instructors. That is, we communicate both implicitly and explicitly with our students using the curriculum, our pedagogies and the means we use to evaluate students. These message systems merit some discussion and analysis because, while they serve as complementary communication media, they also vary according to our disciplinary and personal dispositions for classifying and framing the content we teach. These terms will be defined and connected in order to create a third dimension of relationships, integrative or collection codes, that serve to advise us regarding how we should communicate content to students.
Curriculum
Bernstein (1971) defines curriculum as the relationship between units of content and the time allotted to treat them (p. 48). This is different from the traditional definitions of “a design or plan of institutionalized education” (Goodlad, 1960, p. 185); “an ‘academic plan’” (Stark & Lattuca, 1997) or “a map for how to achieve the ‘outputs’ of desired student performance” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Surprisingly, it is even quite different from the implicit definition of “curriculum” used by the National Educational Commission on Time and Learning which consistently treats curriculum as “content frameworks” consisting of common disciplinary divisions (p.19). Bernstein’s definition makes time a significant variable as it serves the powerful function of articulating the relative importance of units of content. The material that gets most time in any curriculum or class session is understood by everyone to be more important and worthy of attention than topics or content units that receive relatively less time in treatment. When examining a curriculum or course structure, examination of relative and real time allotments may provide important insights about the taken-for-granted values of a department or instructor regarding content. [MS2]
A related notion is timing of content. Part of the curriculum is setting out when content will be treated which complements the allocation of time. An essential task of course and curriculum planning is deciding what must be taught and in what order. Ordering the content is more or less important depending on the discipline. For example, Warren notes that in physics “students must have a thorough understanding of various ways of doing work (including electrical work) before going on to the derived, abstract and extremely difficult concept of energy” (211). In contrast to such strict ordering, Joe Ayers, editor of Communication Education from 1999 to 2002 argues:
If I were in charge of an undergraduate teaching institution’s program, I would
do one fundamental thing and everything else would follow from that one
fundamental thing: I would hire passionate, committed teachers. That’s it. . . .
It would be a flexible curriculum where we would all say, “Let’s just go find
things out!” ( Crandall & Hazel, 2002, p.407)
Between disciplines the differences of timing concerns about content can be dramatic. While great variability exists, given these opposing cases, attention to timing nevertheless seems important.
Time on task is another dimension to be treated. The concept of time on task is one of Chickering and Gamston’s celebrated principles for good practice (1987). They write, “Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for faculty. How an institution defines time expectations for students, faculty, administrators, and other professional staff can establish the basis of high performance for all” (p.5). This is consistent with the literature from the K-12 arena that also argues that appropriate time allocations along with appropriate tasks is the general formula for effectiveness in teaching (Myers, 1990). While little research exists relative to time on task at the university level, it makes sense that the more students are engaged and on task in the classroom the more likely it is that learning will take place.[MS3]
The three patterns of time to content allocation (allocation of time, sequencing topics, and time on task) can be quite meaningful if we attend to them as curriculum codes. Emergent timing patterns inform us about our perceptions of the relative importance of concepts and theories, skills and values treated within the curriculum. A serious analysis of curriculum as time x content can help us consistently align what we believe to be important and our actual curricular [MS4] .
Pedagogy
Pedagogy refers to the repertoire of specific strategies for presentation of content. Patterns of choices within the repertoire are meaningful in that what each strategy features or limits in learning suggests ways of understanding one’s roles, relationships and functions within the learning process. For example, lecture as a strategy is quite different from problem-based learning in the meanings that students attach to the content, the purpose and role of the instructor, their own purpose and role, as well as the nature of disciplinary knowledge. Lecture (when it is the primary mode of instruction) suggests that content is primary in value; it is prefabricated or discovered whole-cloth (Warren, 1981, p. 211); the role of the instructor is to transfer that knowledge, and the role of students is to consume it. On the other hand, in problem-based learning, the people in the classroom are primary, knowledge is discovered, or constructed; the content may be a mix of existing information and new inferences about it, or it may be “newly constructed” by the students, but overall, knowledge has a quality of being developed rather than being a commodity. In essence, the patterns of our choices of teaching strategies are meaningful codes.[MS5] [1]
According to Bernstein (2000), codes serve to select and integrate three things: relevant meanings, the means by which these meanings are realized, and the contexts which guide interpretation of the codes (p.186). It is these three functions of codes that allow interpretation of the pedagogies discussed above. Two examples follow.
When we lecture regularly, the monologue not only articulates the meaning of content for students, but it constantly privileges the instructor’s voice, perspective and interpretation of content distributed to students. Over time, the presentation of bodies of fact with little or no historical narrative of their origination or evolution can mean little else to students except that knowledge exists in pre-fabricated form. Consequently, there is no place for their own knowledge, or critique of what they are learning. The architecture of the lecture hall or traditional classroom coupled with the revelatory nature of the lecture itself serves to locate interpretation of information within the lecture content itself which is consecrated by the instructor. Consequently, what students want to know or need to know is made secondary to the interests of the lecturer.
When the functions of code, in like fashion, are applied to the pedagogy of problem-based learning, the meaning of information and experience is constantly up for discussion and the means by which these meanings are realized put students’ discourse in the center of the instructional event—if they don’t talk or write about the problem posed, they have no real hope of learning anything. The context of the problem-based learning class is typically different architecturally from the lecture and how the class is organized creates “grooves” for how sense is to be made of the content and the learning experience (Edwards & Westgate, 1994). Hence the embedded, patterned, coded qualities of our pedagogical choices have meaning for students. We don’t need to tell students how we see knowledge in our disciplines—they “get” it from the pedagogies we choose. The question is: what meanings are they making through the message systems we use?[MS6]
Evaluation
Similarly, our choices of evaluation tools shape for students the meaning and value of some content units relative to others. Related to both pedagogy and curriculum, the time allocated to evaluations and levels of thought demanded by evaluations have meaning; the degree of authenticity of evaluation also provides an interpretive guide to students regarding the relative importance of content units. The more artificial and contrived the evaluation, the less significant the content treated by it. For example, teachers of argumentation who evaluate students via exams that test memory of terms such as argument stasis, stock issues, burden of proof, etc. create a different meaning for argument as communication than do instructors who evaluate students by having them engage in authentic arguments and systematically reflect on their experiences (Brockriede, 1972; Dowling, 1983).
The teaching of physics presents a more complex and perhaps more telling example. Drawing from the English experience, matriculating students from secondary school to university encountered a consistent problem of repetition of topics during the first terms in university programs (Solomon, 1981). Solomon’s proposed solution, echoed by Chambers (1981) is a uniform core curriculum. Solomon makes the argument that a curriculum that allowed only 25% for elective courses would be great improvement (p. 200). Chambers connects the curriculum and examination systems noting, “The existence of an agreed core syllabus . . . will do little to improve matters unless the examinations themselves are structured to minimise ‘question spotting’” (p. 201). He is well-aware of the meaning of examination as a measure of performance and reward. Faculty anticipate questions and teach to them and students accept the strategy because of the meanings attributed to scores on standardized examinations relative to teacher and school performance. Examination boards in England set the exams in the content areas. Chambers (1981) goes on to complain that, “there are still some boards whose examination papers do little to ensure adequate coverage of the syllabus. It is the nature of the papers [examinations], rather than the nominal syllabus, which really determines what is taught . . .” (p.202).
As noted above, the three message systems of curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation work together as code guiding student interpretations of the value and purpose of disciplinary content. While enthusiastic delivery of content or explicit statements of its value[2] may be understandable to students, the tacit messages of the code created by the interactions of curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation are more meaningful to them. The patterns established through the types of evaluation tasks and the patterns of language used relative to those tasks do more than just tell students what to study or how much to study.[MS7] These patterns indicate what counts as knowledge within any particular discipline.
Two Forms of Control
In educational contexts, the three message systems respond to two forms of control: classification and framing. That is to say, for example, that curricula, pedagogies or evaluations do not exist in their own right, but serve particular instructional functions that must be managed. Classification and framing as forms of control shape the message systems to the purposes for which they are designed or appropriated.
According to Bernstein, classification “refers to the degree of insulation between categories of discourse, agents, practices, contexts, and provides recognition rules for both transmitters and acquirers for the degree of specialization of their texts” (Bernstein, 1990, p. 214). For example, communication studies is weakly classified because it draws some content and theory and methods from linguistics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc. On the other hand, theoretical physics is strongly classified because its concepts, theories and methodologies are distinct from other disciplines. Generally, speaking, the stronger the classification of disciplines, the greater their prestige and power[3]. How knowledge is structured (and the degree to which learners must submit to that structure) has much to do with the perceived value of any discipline. The more mysterious the knowledge, the more powerful it is. For example, theoretical physics is known by relatively few people; most of the knowledge cannot be inferred from common experience, but requires understanding of complex mathematics and often depends on data from extremely complex and expensive mechanical or computer-simulated experiments. On the other hand, some large chunks of knowledge of communication can be inferred from experience which is commonly shared by learners. A reflective observer of human action can know quite a bit about human communication processes without the need for esoteric mathematics or experiments. Theoretical physics is necessarily more mysterious than communication studies since it creates substantial boundaries between knowers and those boundaries are meaningful. [4] What is seen as less accessible, is interpreted as more important, valuable, or powerful. Classification, however, does not operate alone. Since human beings construct, maintain and transfer knowledge, human relationships must factor into the process.
Framing is the term Bernstein uses to name a complementary form of control in teaching. It “refers to the controls on the selection, sequencing, pacing and criterial rules of the pedagogic communicative relationship between transmitters and acquirers . . . .” (Bernstein, 1990, 214). Framing occurs at various levels of the schooling process—in organization and designation of disciplines, schools, departments, colleges, faculties, etc; within courses as instructors select, sequence and pace acquisition of content. For example, a contract-based course design permitting students some choice regarding what topics they focus on, what assignments they complete and when they complete assignments exhibits weak framing. Traditional courses wherein instructors define all topics, assignments, rubrics and due dates exhibit strong framing.
The relationship between classification and framing produce two codes that are particularly informative and meaningful to us as designers of learning experiences.[MS8]
Two Codes
Examination of the framework presented in Figure 1 reveals two continua connecting classification and framing. Strong classification and strong framing create a collection code whereas weak classification and framing create an integrated code. Mixes of these codes make possible many sub-types. Strong collection codes are closed; strong integrated codes are open.
Within the curriculum message system, for example, major courses are more strongly classified than general education courses. For majors, induction into the vocabulary, skills, knowledge, and values of the discipline requires attention to the core theories and questions that make the discipline distinctive (and mysterious). Some majors are fairly closed in terms of pedagogies and evaluations as well. Mathematics tends to enact a collection code much more than, say, marketing. Mathematics tends to be strongly framed with instructors (or textbook authors) determining topics, how they are treated, the pace of treatment; the pedagogy tends to be instructor-centered and evaluations tend to be problem-solution. Marketing may use a collection code, but the nature of marketing allows for a more open curriculum (weaker classification) admitting content and theory from other areas such a psychology, economics or rhetoric.
Consequently, framing may be weaker as well allowing some variety in what constitutes the content, the degree to which students may influence topics treated, when and how fast they may be treated; the kinds of evaluations used, be they exams, essays, case studies, reflections on practice or some mix of evaluations. The more open the area of study the more likely an integrated code will be operating. As we design our courses and curricula, examining the message systems and forms of control that we appropriate can give us significant insight into what we should continue doing, what changes may be in order and how our discipline may fit with others.[MS9]
Two Different Applications
Some examples of code analysis may be helpful at this point. The two areas that have been used so far for illustration, theoretical physics and communication studies provide substantially different cases that the reader can use to locate disciplines of interest.
I teach an upper division/graduate Communication Studies course titled, Communication, self and society. The title itself suggests a weakly classified curriculum. One of the problems with such a course, and the significant problem it had historically, was that it seems to be about everything and therefore, nothing in particular. In fact, when I was first hired and saw this in the catalogue, I scoffed and dismissed it as a course in “picking one’s navel.” Consequently, I was challenged to do something more substantial with the course. The problem, I can now state, was too weak classification and framing creating a hyper-integrated code. However, if the course was to function as an elective in the interpersonal communication track, I had to find a way to bring coherence and focus while allowing some breadth of content. My solution was to strengthen the classification by focusing persistently on the central role communication played in the reflexive development of self in society. Communication and theory of communication served as the anchor point for explaining the development of the self and society as mutually influential entities. While readings were drawn from sociology, psychology, linguistics, women’s studies, and philosophy, they were organized by their mutual focus on communication concepts and theory as they account for the mutual existence of self and society.
Testimony of students who took the course before I redesigned it featured the formlessness of discussions and easiness of passing the course. No real content could be identified relative to the course except the students’ subjective comments. Even the students felt it was not much more than a koffee klatch. My intervention was to change the code from hyper-integrated to integrated by increasing the degree of classification of content using pedagogical and evaluation message systems. That is, I featured technical vocabulary drawn from communication and the readings that provided students more complex and sophisticated concepts by which to account for specific communication phenomena. I used the vocabulary from the readings and encouraged (demanded sometimes) that students use the vocabulary for purposes of explaining behaviour and experience in new and insightful ways.
While evaluation in the original course design was very weakly framed[5], I pushed toward a stronger collection code by creating rubrics for the array of possible assignments and embedded in those rubrics requirements for proper use of vocabulary, for rigorous logical argument and attention to documentation of sources. The shift was a compromise that exerted more power on my part (in fact the core of the course revision as to create a structure that structured [students’] experience) but allowed students some freedom to pursue topics and activities of interest within the broad, but clearly articulated, parameters of the course through contract grading.
Overall, my course design (within a traditionally weakly classified area of study) became more structured by building in characteristics of a collection code in order to bring clarity, rigor and some respect to the area of study. However, the opposite move may be required in another subject area such as physics.
Theoretical physics makes a good comparative case because it has a long history of a strong collection code. The English propensity for national syllabi provoked a debate some years ago about the nature of the course contents, how physics should be taught and the effects of evaluation on the processes. However, as the pace of knowledge development steadily picked up through the 1970s, it seems the strength of the collection code was perceived to be creating negative outcomes in student learning (Longair, 1984; Warren, 1981). Longair (1984), a Cambridge physicist, wrote:
there is just so much material which lecturers feel they have to get through that all phyics syllabuses are absolutely crammed full and there is little room for sitting back and asking, ‘What is all this about?’” Indeed, one becomes so preoccupied with the technical aspects of the subject which are themselves fascinating that one generally leaves it up to the students to find out for
themselves many essential truths about physics. ( p. 2-3)
While it is generally important that students figure things out for themselves, that has some conditions, one of which is accuracy of the conclusions they draw. Longair continued, “students were not quite clear exactly what theoretical physics is” (1984, p. 4). This was certainly a problem of teaching that required redress.
Interestingly, Longair’s response was to present “a lecture course . . . to provide students with a broad outline of the nature of theoretical physics which would put them in a receptive frame of mind for the very intense courses . . . in the final year. (p. xi). One interesting condition of the lectures was that they were “strictly non-examinable” (p. xi). That is, since the lectures were set apart from the curriculum, they could not be included in the students’ standard evaluation at the end of their course of study. Interestingly, Longair qualifies his pedagogical approach, by assuring his readers that his course “is in no way a substitute for the systematic exposition of physics and theoretical physics as they are taught in standard courses” (p. xii). However, he remains optimistic about his goal of “improving students’ appreciation of physics as professional physicists know and love it” (p. xii).
With the problem set out above, Longair’s solution was essentially a weakening of the collection code. Whereas in physics, standardization of theory and practice is highly valued, Longair attempted to increase student knowledge and love for physics by providing an “entirely personal view of the subject” (p. 5). Specifically, he weakened the framing of physics using the curricular, pedagogical and evaluation message systems. In the curricular system, Longair’s entirely personal view opens the discussion to a more subjective and variable way of seeing physics. In order to accomplish that, he apparently took a new approach in shaping the content of the lectures he provided. (Note that even though the specific pedagogical strategy of lecture remained, changing the content to violate generic expectations was enough to qualify his work as a major pedagogical intervention.) Further, the fact that the lectures were non-examinable seems to have had a major, positive impact on student learning (p. xi).
Warren (1981) complained of similar problems in the teaching of physics. He wrote:
For about twenty years there has been a tendency for more and more advanced topics to be included in syllabuses at all levels. This has been accompanied by the omission or less thorough teaching of those fundamentals which must be mastered before advanced concepts can be understood. (p. 210)
Warren’s statement connects the curriculum and pedagogy message systems as they were being used to account for problems in student learning. Interestingly, Warren’s solution to the problem appears to be just the opposite of Longair’s. That is, Warren argued that the “core syllabus will have to be made much more detailed and explicit” (p. 227). Thus Warren’s conclusion seems to have been to invoke a collective code by strengthening the framing of the curriculum and, by inference, pedagogy. Interestingly, he continued,
But the discussions must not be restricted to the formulation of a syllabus. The influence of examinations on teaching requires to be investigated very thoroughly. The examination boards must accept their responsibility for exercising this influence in future.” (227)
Warren and Longair seem to understand implicitly that the curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation message systems exist and interact. They agree that the solution to the problem of students learning physics lies in a shift in the collection code. They disagree on the direction of that shift—Warren argues for a stronger collection code and Longair argued for a weaker one.
Summary
Feature recap of message systems, codes, meaning.
Add a question protocol to guide folks interested in using these concepts for course or curriculum redesign
Conclusion
All teaching requires a blueprint as Richlin (2006) suggests. As the cases above show, the level of analysis can vary from the specific, local course to a national curriculum. The dynamic relationships among the many variables in the teaching process are often invisible, and therefore hardly controllable, until they are made visible by naming them. The model and terminology presented serves as a search model for naming the message systems and organizing their relationships, and analyzing teaching as communication process. Bernstein’s vocabulary complements existing models of teaching design in a flexible and functional way and it helps us to break the codes we implicitly use and to design teaching experiences with greater clarity and control.
[1] Code is “a regulative principle, tacitly acquired, which selects and integrates relevant meanings (classifications), forms of their realization (framing), and evolving contexts” (Bernstein, 1990, 202 and 214). For example, your own indoctrination in your discipline required both you and your instructors, at points, to ignore, diminish, or explain away contradictions in published knowledge, methodological weaknesses, and conflicts among those researchers whose work shapes the field. This illusion is accomplished through curricular, pedagogical and evaluation message systems. You learn what counts as legitimate knowledge through the tacit guidance of regulative principles integrating these message systems. [2] For example, “Now, while this material is very important, it’s kind of boring, so I’ll cover it as fast as possible.” Or, “When reviewing, read the whole chapter, but spend most of your time on section 3 because most of my questions will come from there.” Such statements point to what content the instructor values at any particular point in a course, but the more complex and powerful meanings attributed to the patterns among the educational message systems shape how students relate to the content as a whole. [3] This power amounts to “a structure that structures social experience . . . for those who submit to it.” (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 170). Note that two conditions must obtain for power to function—a structure that makes sense of experience is primary; a willingness to submit to the structure and work to fill in gaps, contradictions or anomalies is also necessary. The acceptance by people of any social, theoretical, theological, etc. structure is central to creation of hierarchy and organization and the exercise of power.
While Bernstein (2000) writes that “power relations . . . create boundaries” (p. 5), it is reasonable to read the process in reverse, that creating boundaries constructs power relations. The systemic relationship here is that bounded entities—departments, disciplines, etc.—create a hierarchy of knowledge” (p. 10). Power accrues to those areas whose “contents are not open to public discussion and challenge” (p. 10).
[4] The rhetorical effect of classification and the mystery it creates is a sense of “reverence for” and “qualification of” those inducted into the class (Burke, 1969). As noted earlier, the fact that people constantly (and often effectively) communicate, lessens the perceived mystery of communication and diminishes reverence for communication as a special class of knowledge or expertise. Alternatively, in the case of theoretical physics, few are inducted into the class, “theoretical physicist,” and the mathematical language of physics is not commonly understood so the effect is “reverence for” such people due to their perceived unique expert qualifications. [5] In this case, the evaluation was almost entirely based on student journals which were narratives of their experiences in everyday life. Little rigor was demanded and it that was rationalized by the argument that subjective experiences should not be judged for that is judging a person, not performance. [MS1]5/507 draft [MS2] Analysis question [MS3]Analysis question [MS4]Questions for analysis: How much time is allocated to specific topics? In what order are the topics treated? How much time is allocated to focused student processing of topics? How much time is allocated to direct instruction? [MS5]Analysis question [MS6] Analysis question [MS7]Analytical question [MS8]Analytical question [MS9]Analytical question
Draft
Mark Stoner, California State University, Sacramento
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/stonerm
stoner1@csus.edu
Department of Communication Studies/Center for Teaching and Learning
2007 Lilly-West Conference on College and University Teaching
Pomona, CA
March 16-17, [MS1]
Introduction
Recently, a number of books grounded in the metaphor of “design” have been written to assist teachers at the primary and secondary levels (Davis, Hawley, McMullan & Spilka, 2005; Kalantzis & Cope, 1997) and tertiary level (Innes, 2004; Richlin, 2006; Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) to help their readers “select, design, and create learning experiences that will enable their own students to learn” (Richlin, 2006, p. ix). These books are valuable resources for college and university instructors in particular since they rarely receive the sort of systematic and thorough guidance in pedagogy that these books offer. Additionally, as designers of curricula, college and university faculty often need ways of locating and assessing any course or course of study as part of a curriculum reflecting a discipline; such a vision is necessary in order to appropriately apply the specific practices described so well by Richlin (2006), Innes (2004), Wiggins and McTighe (2005) and others. That is, at the point of teaching a course, specific design and pedagogical tools have purpose and are enhanced when the context and intent of the course is well-understood by the instructor. So, while these practical texts are important for concrete advice for using a variety of teaching strategies, complementary attention to the abstract (invisible) nature of the communication processes that form the content of any course may enhance our ability to “enable [our] own students to learn.” The model presented in this essay offers a “search model” (Stoner & Perkins 2005, pp. 32-33) which functions as a complement to instructional design texts by facilitating analyses of courses and courses of study for the purpose of making instructional design decisions that enhance the meaningfulness of courses for students. This model is intended to help instructors “locate” and analyze their teaching in the context of a curriculum and discipline.
Communicating the Disciplines
Our disciplines and the courses we design to teach the knowledge constituting them are constructed by our disciplinary languages. Of course, not everything is discursively (socially) constructed (Hacking, 1999), but the terms that allow us to talk sensibly about specific complexes of ideas, concepts and theories necessarily are social constructions (Hacking 1999, pp. 6-7; Vygotsky, 1997). This idea matters because it features the symbolic and communicative nature of teaching in any discipline. It also points to the necessary power systems that exist within educational organizations that affect instruction indirectly. The message systems used for instruction, due to their nature as codes, create less visible or invisible conceptual structures that nevertheless must be properly handled by instructors in order to design, facilitate, assess and document learning.
Different disciplines organize knowledge differently because the problems each is trying to solve vary considerably. For example, law features genres of practical human relationships (contracts, business, civil) whereas engineering organizes around classes of physical phenomena (electrical, structural, and mechanical). Consequently, the body of knowledge in disciplines requires differing vocabularies and discursive codes to work in each—law requires facility in argumentation and legal terminology; engineering primarily requires facility with graphical and mathematical languages. The differing discourses of the disciplines shape core commitments to ways of understanding, analyzing, organizing, valuing, and (in some disciplines) critiquing phenomena within their purview. Consequently, as we are inducted into disciplinary frameworks and their approved applications (Polanyi, 1962), these frameworks act as invisible forces that influence our decisions about how to convey knowledge to students. Understanding how discursive forces emanate from our disciplinary languages provides a way mindfully to explain or critique curricular and course designs. In other words, by breaking our own codes we can teach with greater clarity and control.
Three Message Systems
Figure 1 names and organizes three message systems that we regularly use in our work as instructors. That is, we communicate both implicitly and explicitly with our students using the curriculum, our pedagogies and the means we use to evaluate students. These message systems merit some discussion and analysis because, while they serve as complementary communication media, they also vary according to our disciplinary and personal dispositions for classifying and framing the content we teach. These terms will be defined and connected in order to create a third dimension of relationships, integrative or collection codes, that serve to advise us regarding how we should communicate content to students.
Curriculum
Bernstein (1971) defines curriculum as the relationship between units of content and the time allotted to treat them (p. 48). This is different from the traditional definitions of “a design or plan of institutionalized education” (Goodlad, 1960, p. 185); “an ‘academic plan’” (Stark & Lattuca, 1997) or “a map for how to achieve the ‘outputs’ of desired student performance” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Surprisingly, it is even quite different from the implicit definition of “curriculum” used by the National Educational Commission on Time and Learning which consistently treats curriculum as “content frameworks” consisting of common disciplinary divisions (p.19). Bernstein’s definition makes time a significant variable as it serves the powerful function of articulating the relative importance of units of content. The material that gets most time in any curriculum or class session is understood by everyone to be more important and worthy of attention than topics or content units that receive relatively less time in treatment. When examining a curriculum or course structure, examination of relative and real time allotments may provide important insights about the taken-for-granted values of a department or instructor regarding content. [MS2]
A related notion is timing of content. Part of the curriculum is setting out when content will be treated which complements the allocation of time. An essential task of course and curriculum planning is deciding what must be taught and in what order. Ordering the content is more or less important depending on the discipline. For example, Warren notes that in physics “students must have a thorough understanding of various ways of doing work (including electrical work) before going on to the derived, abstract and extremely difficult concept of energy” (211). In contrast to such strict ordering, Joe Ayers, editor of Communication Education from 1999 to 2002 argues:
If I were in charge of an undergraduate teaching institution’s program, I would
do one fundamental thing and everything else would follow from that one
fundamental thing: I would hire passionate, committed teachers. That’s it. . . .
It would be a flexible curriculum where we would all say, “Let’s just go find
things out!” ( Crandall & Hazel, 2002, p.407)
Between disciplines the differences of timing concerns about content can be dramatic. While great variability exists, given these opposing cases, attention to timing nevertheless seems important.
Time on task is another dimension to be treated. The concept of time on task is one of Chickering and Gamston’s celebrated principles for good practice (1987). They write, “Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for faculty. How an institution defines time expectations for students, faculty, administrators, and other professional staff can establish the basis of high performance for all” (p.5). This is consistent with the literature from the K-12 arena that also argues that appropriate time allocations along with appropriate tasks is the general formula for effectiveness in teaching (Myers, 1990). While little research exists relative to time on task at the university level, it makes sense that the more students are engaged and on task in the classroom the more likely it is that learning will take place.[MS3]
The three patterns of time to content allocation (allocation of time, sequencing topics, and time on task) can be quite meaningful if we attend to them as curriculum codes. Emergent timing patterns inform us about our perceptions of the relative importance of concepts and theories, skills and values treated within the curriculum. A serious analysis of curriculum as time x content can help us consistently align what we believe to be important and our actual curricular [MS4] .
Pedagogy
Pedagogy refers to the repertoire of specific strategies for presentation of content. Patterns of choices within the repertoire are meaningful in that what each strategy features or limits in learning suggests ways of understanding one’s roles, relationships and functions within the learning process. For example, lecture as a strategy is quite different from problem-based learning in the meanings that students attach to the content, the purpose and role of the instructor, their own purpose and role, as well as the nature of disciplinary knowledge. Lecture (when it is the primary mode of instruction) suggests that content is primary in value; it is prefabricated or discovered whole-cloth (Warren, 1981, p. 211); the role of the instructor is to transfer that knowledge, and the role of students is to consume it. On the other hand, in problem-based learning, the people in the classroom are primary, knowledge is discovered, or constructed; the content may be a mix of existing information and new inferences about it, or it may be “newly constructed” by the students, but overall, knowledge has a quality of being developed rather than being a commodity. In essence, the patterns of our choices of teaching strategies are meaningful codes.[MS5] [1]
According to Bernstein (2000), codes serve to select and integrate three things: relevant meanings, the means by which these meanings are realized, and the contexts which guide interpretation of the codes (p.186). It is these three functions of codes that allow interpretation of the pedagogies discussed above. Two examples follow.
When we lecture regularly, the monologue not only articulates the meaning of content for students, but it constantly privileges the instructor’s voice, perspective and interpretation of content distributed to students. Over time, the presentation of bodies of fact with little or no historical narrative of their origination or evolution can mean little else to students except that knowledge exists in pre-fabricated form. Consequently, there is no place for their own knowledge, or critique of what they are learning. The architecture of the lecture hall or traditional classroom coupled with the revelatory nature of the lecture itself serves to locate interpretation of information within the lecture content itself which is consecrated by the instructor. Consequently, what students want to know or need to know is made secondary to the interests of the lecturer.
When the functions of code, in like fashion, are applied to the pedagogy of problem-based learning, the meaning of information and experience is constantly up for discussion and the means by which these meanings are realized put students’ discourse in the center of the instructional event—if they don’t talk or write about the problem posed, they have no real hope of learning anything. The context of the problem-based learning class is typically different architecturally from the lecture and how the class is organized creates “grooves” for how sense is to be made of the content and the learning experience (Edwards & Westgate, 1994). Hence the embedded, patterned, coded qualities of our pedagogical choices have meaning for students. We don’t need to tell students how we see knowledge in our disciplines—they “get” it from the pedagogies we choose. The question is: what meanings are they making through the message systems we use?[MS6]
Evaluation
Similarly, our choices of evaluation tools shape for students the meaning and value of some content units relative to others. Related to both pedagogy and curriculum, the time allocated to evaluations and levels of thought demanded by evaluations have meaning; the degree of authenticity of evaluation also provides an interpretive guide to students regarding the relative importance of content units. The more artificial and contrived the evaluation, the less significant the content treated by it. For example, teachers of argumentation who evaluate students via exams that test memory of terms such as argument stasis, stock issues, burden of proof, etc. create a different meaning for argument as communication than do instructors who evaluate students by having them engage in authentic arguments and systematically reflect on their experiences (Brockriede, 1972; Dowling, 1983).
The teaching of physics presents a more complex and perhaps more telling example. Drawing from the English experience, matriculating students from secondary school to university encountered a consistent problem of repetition of topics during the first terms in university programs (Solomon, 1981). Solomon’s proposed solution, echoed by Chambers (1981) is a uniform core curriculum. Solomon makes the argument that a curriculum that allowed only 25% for elective courses would be great improvement (p. 200). Chambers connects the curriculum and examination systems noting, “The existence of an agreed core syllabus . . . will do little to improve matters unless the examinations themselves are structured to minimise ‘question spotting’” (p. 201). He is well-aware of the meaning of examination as a measure of performance and reward. Faculty anticipate questions and teach to them and students accept the strategy because of the meanings attributed to scores on standardized examinations relative to teacher and school performance. Examination boards in England set the exams in the content areas. Chambers (1981) goes on to complain that, “there are still some boards whose examination papers do little to ensure adequate coverage of the syllabus. It is the nature of the papers [examinations], rather than the nominal syllabus, which really determines what is taught . . .” (p.202).
As noted above, the three message systems of curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation work together as code guiding student interpretations of the value and purpose of disciplinary content. While enthusiastic delivery of content or explicit statements of its value[2] may be understandable to students, the tacit messages of the code created by the interactions of curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation are more meaningful to them. The patterns established through the types of evaluation tasks and the patterns of language used relative to those tasks do more than just tell students what to study or how much to study.[MS7] These patterns indicate what counts as knowledge within any particular discipline.
Two Forms of Control
In educational contexts, the three message systems respond to two forms of control: classification and framing. That is to say, for example, that curricula, pedagogies or evaluations do not exist in their own right, but serve particular instructional functions that must be managed. Classification and framing as forms of control shape the message systems to the purposes for which they are designed or appropriated.
According to Bernstein, classification “refers to the degree of insulation between categories of discourse, agents, practices, contexts, and provides recognition rules for both transmitters and acquirers for the degree of specialization of their texts” (Bernstein, 1990, p. 214). For example, communication studies is weakly classified because it draws some content and theory and methods from linguistics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc. On the other hand, theoretical physics is strongly classified because its concepts, theories and methodologies are distinct from other disciplines. Generally, speaking, the stronger the classification of disciplines, the greater their prestige and power[3]. How knowledge is structured (and the degree to which learners must submit to that structure) has much to do with the perceived value of any discipline. The more mysterious the knowledge, the more powerful it is. For example, theoretical physics is known by relatively few people; most of the knowledge cannot be inferred from common experience, but requires understanding of complex mathematics and often depends on data from extremely complex and expensive mechanical or computer-simulated experiments. On the other hand, some large chunks of knowledge of communication can be inferred from experience which is commonly shared by learners. A reflective observer of human action can know quite a bit about human communication processes without the need for esoteric mathematics or experiments. Theoretical physics is necessarily more mysterious than communication studies since it creates substantial boundaries between knowers and those boundaries are meaningful. [4] What is seen as less accessible, is interpreted as more important, valuable, or powerful. Classification, however, does not operate alone. Since human beings construct, maintain and transfer knowledge, human relationships must factor into the process.
Framing is the term Bernstein uses to name a complementary form of control in teaching. It “refers to the controls on the selection, sequencing, pacing and criterial rules of the pedagogic communicative relationship between transmitters and acquirers . . . .” (Bernstein, 1990, 214). Framing occurs at various levels of the schooling process—in organization and designation of disciplines, schools, departments, colleges, faculties, etc; within courses as instructors select, sequence and pace acquisition of content. For example, a contract-based course design permitting students some choice regarding what topics they focus on, what assignments they complete and when they complete assignments exhibits weak framing. Traditional courses wherein instructors define all topics, assignments, rubrics and due dates exhibit strong framing.
The relationship between classification and framing produce two codes that are particularly informative and meaningful to us as designers of learning experiences.[MS8]
Two Codes
Examination of the framework presented in Figure 1 reveals two continua connecting classification and framing. Strong classification and strong framing create a collection code whereas weak classification and framing create an integrated code. Mixes of these codes make possible many sub-types. Strong collection codes are closed; strong integrated codes are open.
Within the curriculum message system, for example, major courses are more strongly classified than general education courses. For majors, induction into the vocabulary, skills, knowledge, and values of the discipline requires attention to the core theories and questions that make the discipline distinctive (and mysterious). Some majors are fairly closed in terms of pedagogies and evaluations as well. Mathematics tends to enact a collection code much more than, say, marketing. Mathematics tends to be strongly framed with instructors (or textbook authors) determining topics, how they are treated, the pace of treatment; the pedagogy tends to be instructor-centered and evaluations tend to be problem-solution. Marketing may use a collection code, but the nature of marketing allows for a more open curriculum (weaker classification) admitting content and theory from other areas such a psychology, economics or rhetoric.
Consequently, framing may be weaker as well allowing some variety in what constitutes the content, the degree to which students may influence topics treated, when and how fast they may be treated; the kinds of evaluations used, be they exams, essays, case studies, reflections on practice or some mix of evaluations. The more open the area of study the more likely an integrated code will be operating. As we design our courses and curricula, examining the message systems and forms of control that we appropriate can give us significant insight into what we should continue doing, what changes may be in order and how our discipline may fit with others.[MS9]
Two Different Applications
Some examples of code analysis may be helpful at this point. The two areas that have been used so far for illustration, theoretical physics and communication studies provide substantially different cases that the reader can use to locate disciplines of interest.
I teach an upper division/graduate Communication Studies course titled, Communication, self and society. The title itself suggests a weakly classified curriculum. One of the problems with such a course, and the significant problem it had historically, was that it seems to be about everything and therefore, nothing in particular. In fact, when I was first hired and saw this in the catalogue, I scoffed and dismissed it as a course in “picking one’s navel.” Consequently, I was challenged to do something more substantial with the course. The problem, I can now state, was too weak classification and framing creating a hyper-integrated code. However, if the course was to function as an elective in the interpersonal communication track, I had to find a way to bring coherence and focus while allowing some breadth of content. My solution was to strengthen the classification by focusing persistently on the central role communication played in the reflexive development of self in society. Communication and theory of communication served as the anchor point for explaining the development of the self and society as mutually influential entities. While readings were drawn from sociology, psychology, linguistics, women’s studies, and philosophy, they were organized by their mutual focus on communication concepts and theory as they account for the mutual existence of self and society.
Testimony of students who took the course before I redesigned it featured the formlessness of discussions and easiness of passing the course. No real content could be identified relative to the course except the students’ subjective comments. Even the students felt it was not much more than a koffee klatch. My intervention was to change the code from hyper-integrated to integrated by increasing the degree of classification of content using pedagogical and evaluation message systems. That is, I featured technical vocabulary drawn from communication and the readings that provided students more complex and sophisticated concepts by which to account for specific communication phenomena. I used the vocabulary from the readings and encouraged (demanded sometimes) that students use the vocabulary for purposes of explaining behaviour and experience in new and insightful ways.
While evaluation in the original course design was very weakly framed[5], I pushed toward a stronger collection code by creating rubrics for the array of possible assignments and embedded in those rubrics requirements for proper use of vocabulary, for rigorous logical argument and attention to documentation of sources. The shift was a compromise that exerted more power on my part (in fact the core of the course revision as to create a structure that structured [students’] experience) but allowed students some freedom to pursue topics and activities of interest within the broad, but clearly articulated, parameters of the course through contract grading.
Overall, my course design (within a traditionally weakly classified area of study) became more structured by building in characteristics of a collection code in order to bring clarity, rigor and some respect to the area of study. However, the opposite move may be required in another subject area such as physics.
Theoretical physics makes a good comparative case because it has a long history of a strong collection code. The English propensity for national syllabi provoked a debate some years ago about the nature of the course contents, how physics should be taught and the effects of evaluation on the processes. However, as the pace of knowledge development steadily picked up through the 1970s, it seems the strength of the collection code was perceived to be creating negative outcomes in student learning (Longair, 1984; Warren, 1981). Longair (1984), a Cambridge physicist, wrote:
there is just so much material which lecturers feel they have to get through that all phyics syllabuses are absolutely crammed full and there is little room for sitting back and asking, ‘What is all this about?’” Indeed, one becomes so preoccupied with the technical aspects of the subject which are themselves fascinating that one generally leaves it up to the students to find out for
themselves many essential truths about physics. ( p. 2-3)
While it is generally important that students figure things out for themselves, that has some conditions, one of which is accuracy of the conclusions they draw. Longair continued, “students were not quite clear exactly what theoretical physics is” (1984, p. 4). This was certainly a problem of teaching that required redress.
Interestingly, Longair’s response was to present “a lecture course . . . to provide students with a broad outline of the nature of theoretical physics which would put them in a receptive frame of mind for the very intense courses . . . in the final year. (p. xi). One interesting condition of the lectures was that they were “strictly non-examinable” (p. xi). That is, since the lectures were set apart from the curriculum, they could not be included in the students’ standard evaluation at the end of their course of study. Interestingly, Longair qualifies his pedagogical approach, by assuring his readers that his course “is in no way a substitute for the systematic exposition of physics and theoretical physics as they are taught in standard courses” (p. xii). However, he remains optimistic about his goal of “improving students’ appreciation of physics as professional physicists know and love it” (p. xii).
With the problem set out above, Longair’s solution was essentially a weakening of the collection code. Whereas in physics, standardization of theory and practice is highly valued, Longair attempted to increase student knowledge and love for physics by providing an “entirely personal view of the subject” (p. 5). Specifically, he weakened the framing of physics using the curricular, pedagogical and evaluation message systems. In the curricular system, Longair’s entirely personal view opens the discussion to a more subjective and variable way of seeing physics. In order to accomplish that, he apparently took a new approach in shaping the content of the lectures he provided. (Note that even though the specific pedagogical strategy of lecture remained, changing the content to violate generic expectations was enough to qualify his work as a major pedagogical intervention.) Further, the fact that the lectures were non-examinable seems to have had a major, positive impact on student learning (p. xi).
Warren (1981) complained of similar problems in the teaching of physics. He wrote:
For about twenty years there has been a tendency for more and more advanced topics to be included in syllabuses at all levels. This has been accompanied by the omission or less thorough teaching of those fundamentals which must be mastered before advanced concepts can be understood. (p. 210)
Warren’s statement connects the curriculum and pedagogy message systems as they were being used to account for problems in student learning. Interestingly, Warren’s solution to the problem appears to be just the opposite of Longair’s. That is, Warren argued that the “core syllabus will have to be made much more detailed and explicit” (p. 227). Thus Warren’s conclusion seems to have been to invoke a collective code by strengthening the framing of the curriculum and, by inference, pedagogy. Interestingly, he continued,
But the discussions must not be restricted to the formulation of a syllabus. The influence of examinations on teaching requires to be investigated very thoroughly. The examination boards must accept their responsibility for exercising this influence in future.” (227)
Warren and Longair seem to understand implicitly that the curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation message systems exist and interact. They agree that the solution to the problem of students learning physics lies in a shift in the collection code. They disagree on the direction of that shift—Warren argues for a stronger collection code and Longair argued for a weaker one.
Summary
Conclusion
All teaching requires a blueprint as Richlin (2006) suggests. As the cases above show, the level of analysis can vary from the specific, local course to a national curriculum. The dynamic relationships among the many variables in the teaching process are often invisible, and therefore hardly controllable, until they are made visible by naming them. The model and terminology presented serves as a search model for naming the message systems and organizing their relationships, and analyzing teaching as communication process. Bernstein’s vocabulary complements existing models of teaching design in a flexible and functional way and it helps us to break the codes we implicitly use and to design teaching experiences with greater clarity and control.
[1] Code is “a regulative principle, tacitly acquired, which selects and integrates relevant meanings (classifications), forms of their realization (framing), and evolving contexts” (Bernstein, 1990, 202 and 214). For example, your own indoctrination in your discipline required both you and your instructors, at points, to ignore, diminish, or explain away contradictions in published knowledge, methodological weaknesses, and conflicts among those researchers whose work shapes the field. This illusion is accomplished through curricular, pedagogical and evaluation message systems. You learn what counts as legitimate knowledge through the tacit guidance of regulative principles integrating these message systems.
[2] For example, “Now, while this material is very important, it’s kind of boring, so I’ll cover it as fast as possible.” Or, “When reviewing, read the whole chapter, but spend most of your time on section 3 because most of my questions will come from there.” Such statements point to what content the instructor values at any particular point in a course, but the more complex and powerful meanings attributed to the patterns among the educational message systems shape how students relate to the content as a whole.
[3] This power amounts to “a structure that structures social experience . . . for those who submit to it.” (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 170). Note that two conditions must obtain for power to function—a structure that makes sense of experience is primary; a willingness to submit to the structure and work to fill in gaps, contradictions or anomalies is also necessary. The acceptance by people of any social, theoretical, theological, etc. structure is central to creation of hierarchy and organization and the exercise of power.
While Bernstein (2000) writes that “power relations . . . create boundaries” (p. 5), it is reasonable to read the process in reverse, that creating boundaries constructs power relations. The systemic relationship here is that bounded entities—departments, disciplines, etc.—create a hierarchy of knowledge” (p. 10). Power accrues to those areas whose “contents are not open to public discussion and challenge” (p. 10).
[4] The rhetorical effect of classification and the mystery it creates is a sense of “reverence for” and “qualification of” those inducted into the class (Burke, 1969). As noted earlier, the fact that people constantly (and often effectively) communicate, lessens the perceived mystery of communication and diminishes reverence for communication as a special class of knowledge or expertise. Alternatively, in the case of theoretical physics, few are inducted into the class, “theoretical physicist,” and the mathematical language of physics is not commonly understood so the effect is “reverence for” such people due to their perceived unique expert qualifications.
[5] In this case, the evaluation was almost entirely based on student journals which were narratives of their experiences in everyday life. Little rigor was demanded and it that was rationalized by the argument that subjective experiences should not be judged for that is judging a person, not performance.
[MS1]5/507 draft
[MS2] Analysis question
[MS3]Analysis question
[MS4]Questions for analysis: How much time is allocated to specific topics? In what order are the topics treated? How much time is allocated to focused student processing of topics? How much time is allocated to direct instruction?
[MS5]Analysis question
[MS6] Analysis question
[MS7]Analytical question
[MS8]Analytical question
[MS9]Analytical question